Tourism penetration index in small Caribbean islands

The postwar restructuring of small tropical islands toward mass tourism development has threatened their sustainability. A major cause has been inadequate understanding of tourism dynamics and the absence of comprehensive integrated measures of tourism's pervasive economic, social, and environmental impacts. This paper constructs a composite Tourism Penetration Index from per capita visitor spending, daily visitor densities per 1,000 population, and hotel rooms per square kilometer. It is tested on 20 small Caribbean islands and yields three levels of increasing penetration. Four case studies are presented to illustrate the behavior of islands at different levels of penetration and to highlight the policy implications for Dominica, St. Lucia, Antigua/Barbuda, and St. Maarten/St. Martin. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.